Posted tagged ‘fighter’

It looks like Arcana Heart fans have another title in the series to look forward to, with Examu launching a teaser site for Arcana Heart 3 today. As it’s a teaser site there are basically no details available on the game at this time except that it will run on the ex-board again. As you might recall Arcana Heart 2 did get a small “official” release in the US when Andamiro brought the game over last year at AMOA 2008 so I wonder if they will do the same thing again with AH3.

Today must be a day for fighters as here is some news on another highly anticipated arcade fighter, KOFXII. While I hadn’t been keeping tabs on the teaser site, what is there now is nicely detailed with new sections describing the game and characters. Even if you can’t understand the Japanese text in certain areas, it’s a good place for screenshots and upcoming movies of the game in action to salivate over.

While I don’t expect to see this get much US distribution, it will likely be a a title that will be imported by many locations; I certainly am considering it. For those of you out there looking into opening up your own arcade, if you have a notable Latino population in your area then you should consider getting any KOF game really as the game is huge south of the US border. I’ve seen that with earnings on my KOF98, which has done far better than I ever expected. KOFXII could very well get the attention of other fighter fans between it’s amazing 2D look and it’s battle system.

UPDATE: Aaron Auzis has kindly taken the time to translate some information from the updated KOF site and has provided that translation to us at AH. Many thanks Aaron! If you’d like to get see what new information has been revealed on the game, including details on the new mechanics that KOFXII will bring to the table, hit the post break below where it says “Read the rest of this post”.

A little while ago we received a rumor from several sources stating that the new Capcom arcade fighter Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom would be running on Nintendo Wii based hardware. While this was seemingly confirmed by the fact that Capcom plans on a release of the game in both arcades and the Wii, I have heard that some still dispute the hardware it’s running on (some say System 256, others Taito Type X2). It’s not that big of a deal but with the information we have received recently, it may finally settle the “what’s it running on” argument, with a Stinger Report source in Japan suggesting:

The game is scheduled for a kit release in December, but Nintendo may hinder full release as a argument breaks out regarding if the official lines of development was followed with regards the release of the AC game on the Nintendo Wii chip-set. Seems incredible but Capcom may actually have developed the AC version of the game without full backing of Nintendo, explaining the lack of any Nintendo copyright on literature.

It certainly does seem strange that a company like Capcom would go to the trouble of developing their own Wii-Based hardware without permission from Nintendo but stranger things have happened.

While a certain company may feel that arcades are dead and so there is no use selling their fighter arcade title in the US, a different company known as Aksys has eschewed the logic of the aformentioned ‘certain company’ and released their fighter for arcades today known as BlazBlue. In case you are not familiar with it, BlazBlue is a high-definition 2.5D fighting game based upon the Guilty Gear series that had previously been available in Japan. AkSys has a website for the game available now and it should be shipping out to arcades who ordered it already. I imagine that the price is the same as it was we first found out about it a few months ago (kit: $3500, full machine could vary between $5k-$7k depending on the model).

I think that it’s great to see another gauntlet thrown down for fighters in the US. If Dark Presence can make it out before the end of the year, then that will mean that 3 fighting games (clarification: in an official manner) will have been made available to arcades this year alone – I wouldn’t be surprised to see more next year if the trend continues.

BTW- If you’re an operator interested in BlazBlue, I do not believe that they are going through distributors to sell the game but are doing it direct. I’m not sure how that will affect their sales overall but it will explain why you won’t see this game showing up on many distributor websites.

This came as a surprise – I was wandering around the show near the GlobalVR booth and between two Pump It Up games I see two Japanese candy cabs housing a fighter in them. I get closer to check it out and it’s Arcana Heart 2! I really didn’t expect to see this in the States in arcade form, but I’m guessing that the effect of SFIV is making some developers think twice about fighters.

The basic gist of the game is about girls fighting each other – with magic and sometimes swords. It’s hard to pass that up! While I didn’t consider myself good at the game, I think I did OK beating out two opponents and getting a several levels into the game before being defeated. The game has two modes – arcade and story. The story mode has a bit of text to go but at least it’s optional.

Graphically it looks very good between the high-res 2D animation (I’m not sure if it was HD resolution or not but it looked like it) and the special effects that the game throws about. The control scheme takes a little getting used to – I’m not used to fighters with five buttons schemes. Fortunately the marquee also serves as the manual so you can figure out what it is that you are doing.

Andamiro is going to bring AH2 to the States in kit form and at a “very low price”. I don’t have a date yet on this but I will be checking with my distributor on that as I assume that it is going to be very soon as the game is complete. For more check out the video below and witness my failed attempt to try and play the game with one hand. I guess it wasn’t too bad considering that it was the first time I played that game and the first time I tried to play a fighter like that.

Later I will be posting videos and info on GlobalVR, Incredible Technologies and more, but I might only get to that tomorrow.

This came as a surprise – I was wandering around the show near the GlobalVR booth and between two Pump It Up games I see two Japanese candy cabs housing a fighter in them. I get closer to check it out and it’s Arcana Heart 2! I really didn’t expect to see this in the States in arcade form, but I’m guessing that the effect of SFIV is making some developers think twice about fighters.

The basic gist of the game is about girls fighting each other – with magic and sometimes swords. It’s hard to pass that up! While I didn’t consider myself good at the game, I think I did OK beating out two opponents and getting a several levels into the game before being defeated. The game has two modes – arcade and story. The story mode has a bit of text to go but at least it’s optional.

Graphically it looks very good between the high-res 2D animation (I’m not sure if it was HD resolution or not but it looked like it) and the special effects that the game throws about. The control scheme takes a little getting used to – I’m not used to fighters with five buttons schemes. Fortunately the marquee also serves as the manual so you can figure out what it is that you are doing.

Andamiro is going to bring AH2 to the States in kit form and at a “very low price”. I don’t have a date yet on this but I will be checking with my distributor on that as I assume that it is going to be very soon as the game is complete. For more check out the video below and witness my failed attempt to try and play the game with one hand. I guess it wasn’t too bad considering that it was the first time I played that game and the first time I tried to play a fighter like that.

Later I will be posting videos and info on GlobalVR, Incredible Technologies and more, but I might only get to that tomorrow.

For as many things as we are able to find out about arcades around the net, sometimes a game or announcement slips under our radar. Fortunately it’s not for forever so you’ll have to forgive us that we bringing this up now but below is a video taken from GDC’08 of the upcoming 3D rendition of Samurai Spirits Sen (or Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny) for arcades. Come to think of it, I believe that we mentioned this one back in February but I admit that I forgot about it until today. It looks bloody awesome (literally) but obviously it is only for venues that can carry red labeled games due to it’s graphic content. I’m not sure when it is supposed to be released or in what regions exactly but where it was shown at GDC, I hope that it would be on the table for an international release this year. The game uses the Taito TypeX2 hardware but whether or not it will live up to the name (as the last effort that this game made into 3D was shunned by many) remains to be seen. Also tacked on is a second video that was on Gametrailers from about the same time as the first. I’ve been so used to sites like GT rarely carrying something arcade related (unless it’s SFIV) that I stopped checking (I used to check it for console stuff but it’s been a while as I just don’t have the time for consoles right now).